


Bury me where the earth meets the sky

by Laurelwreath



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, POV Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-30
Updated: 2013-06-30
Packaged: 2017-12-16 16:47:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/864305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laurelwreath/pseuds/Laurelwreath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I wanted to explore what might happen to the wildlings when they tried to integrate into Northern society.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bury me where the earth meets the sky

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't make this into a coherent whole to save my life, so it sort of has two different parts with same themes.

 

They found the camp in the early hours of the morning. The raiders were asleep with only a skinny, exhausted young boy was keeping watch. The cave was well hidden, brushes covering a narrow crack in a cliff that widened into a larger passage, but Alys had given him good directions. “I think I know where they’re hiding,” she’d said at once, when the smallfolk came to their lord with news of robberies and cattle raids.  “You said the incidents have all been in the west… there’s a cave between the Dreadfort lands and Last Hearth, near the river. I rode there with Daryn when we were children. He’d heard of it from some old woodsman who used to be a poacher. It was their hideout until Lord Bolton got wind of it and after he routed them, no-one dared to use it anymore. ” He tried to suggest that Lord Umber might deal with the bandits if their hideout was on his lands, but Alys wouldn’t hear of it. “The smallfolk expect you to protect them from raiders and not give the responsibility over to Umber.” “They’re… they’re free folk. The raiders.” She touched his arm. “I know. And that is precisely why you must be seen to ride out against them, or people will say you side with the wildlings.” He knew she was right, as usual.

The boy gave a cry which was cut short by Therrin’s sword, and quietly the rest of the Thenns filed in. The cave was an excellent hideaway, but there was only one way out, and it was now secured by them. A few men had been woken by the cry and were fumbling for their arms, but in an instant, soldiers were by their side, swords at the ready. “Surrender! You are outnumbered and cannot escape!” He realized he’d spoken in Old Tongue only after he heard an answering shout. “What?” The Umber serjeant who had crept in the cave beside him gave him a nervous look. “Called me a kneeler bastard after I told them to surrender,” Sigorn muttered, clenching his teeth. “You know these men?” He cursed the serjeant silently. “They know _me_ , there’s a difference.”

More soldiers were pouring in to the cave, Umber men mixed with the last of his Thenns. The raiders had no hope of overpowering them, but men jumped up despite the swords pointed at them, throwing themselves at the nearest attacker in hope of an honorable death. “Take them prisoner!” It was easy for steel-armored men to incapacitate them without killing, clad as the robbers were in rags and tattered furs with barely a bit of chainmail between them.

Sigorn surveyed his prisoners in the chilly light of dawn. The wildlings had clearly been reduced to raiding for sustenance. They had no horses, no decent arms and starvation was evident from their sunken cheeks and eyes. No valuables were found amidst their possessions, everything that could be sold or bartered had probably been gone long ago. He thought privately that the smallfolk were cowards for fearing such a sorry lot. _They ‘re like mangy foxes, digging at middens and preying on old lame hens._

As a rule, the Thenns had despised those free folk who had made their living raiding northmen. The valley of Thenn had been far too distant from the Wall to make such excursions feasible, and the Thenns had prided themselves on making their own arms and armor and trading for what they couldn’t produce. Fighting other free folk and enjoying the spoils of a victory was a different matter. Still, the best raiders had been undeniably brave, scaling the Wall and stealing gold and jewels instead of pigs and chickens.

“Who is your leader?” The ragged, dirty men glanced at each other, keeping resolutely quiet, but a small figure pushed forward from the middle of the throng. “It’s me you’re looking for. Fancy you, sitting on a horse like that, it’d make a week’s meals for us.” At first he took it for an insolent boy, but on closer look, the figure was unmistakably a woman, and he suffered a severe shock when the jagged bits of memories suddenly fit together. “Munda?” “Yes, that’s me. Good day, my lord Thenn” she executed a mocking bow.

It was seven years since they laid Tormund on the hilltop, with his sword and mead-horn, his axe and shield and his helmet, and draped the black cloak over his body. Sigorn set the last stone on the pile which rose six feet high and fifty feet wide. _A great grave for a great man,_ he thought, glad that Tormund’s body need not be burned. “Is that how you want to be buried?” Alys asked him afterward, and he was more thankful for it than he could say. The thought of lying for all eternity under the stone walls of Karhold had privately abhorred him, but he was determined not to disdain the customs of his wife’s people, in death any more than in life.

He remembered dimly that Tormund’s boys still held one of the Watch’s castles, though after the Others were defeated and the winter was over, there was less need for manning all of them. He would have expected Munda to stay alongside her brothers. “Why are you living like this? Weren’t you at the Wall?”

 “Quarreled with me brothers, so I thought it better to strike out on our own, me and Ryk. We farmed for a while, but it wasn’t for us, so we had this plan to go back to the North and find some deserted village, live like we used to, hunting and fishing. Only he died, so… “She shrugged, indicating the men around her. “I was a bit at a dead end, but I came across others who had nowhere to go, and we decided to try the old ways again. We are the last free men, you see, we are the ones who couldn’t make like the kneelers and find a place in this world,” she scowled. She tried to be flippant, but her misery was painfully clear. Raiding had been a job for the young and brave, but there wasn’t a young face to be seen in this ragged crowd. Sigorn looked harder at her and caught something else. She was ill, and though she didn’t cough or wheeze, her sickness was all the more fatal because it gnawed her from the inside. She was the skeleton of a once ample woman, a withered and bent crony who was of an age with him.

“You are dying.” It slipped out of his mouth, but Munda merely nodded. “Sharp eyes you have. Yes I am, but I thought I could at least die free. I don’t want to go back to my brothers, let my children see me like this… we had some good times when Ryk was alive and I want them to remember who I used to be, not this.” “You have children?” “Had two, a boy and a girl. They’re with my brothers and better for them. I was never much of a mother and after Ryk died, there was no way I could take care of them alone.”

He could see in her eyes that she knew what her fate would be. A hangman’s noose was waiting at Last Hearth for any captured raiders, and he’d agreed to give the prisoners over to Umber men. He glanced at Umber’s serjeant and made up his mind to take the consequences. “Give me your sword,” he barked at the serjeant in Common Tongue. He threw the sword on the ground before Munda and dismounted, drawing his own.

“Do you still want to die free?” Munda nodded as he slashed the rope that bound her wrists and handed her the sword. “For our fathers.”

“I hope I shall meet them in the halls of the heroes.” She raised her sword, smiling, and charged him. A parry and a thrust was all it took. He was a strong man, armored and capable with a sword, and he did her the honor of not toying with her before granting her the death she wished. Munda collapsed on the ground as he pulled out the sword that had pierced her chest.

“Gather some wood and make a pyre for her” he shouted at his men and turned to the serjeant who was speechless with astonishment. “The rest of that scum are yours. Present Lord Umber with my apologies, but I think his hangman will have work enough without one woman.” The serjeant gave orders for Umber men to form a line with the prisoners and begin the march home, and they watched them file past while the Thenns dragged Munda’s corpse on a makeshift pyre and set it alight. There wasn’t time to build her a proper grave, so the fire would have to do. When the last of the prisoners were retreating, the serjeant made to turn his horse and follow them, but hesitated and glanced at Sigorn. “If I may be so bold... you knew her?”  He gave the serjeant a cold stare, but resigned himself to giving some explanation. “Not really, but her father and mine own were brothers in arms, a long time ago.” The serjeant’s face was inscrutable. Gods knew how this tale would be twisted on telling, and what the northmen would make of it.

”Have you ever thought about it? About going back, I mean?” Alys glances at him under lowered eyelids after he’s finished telling her of the bandits.  “What for? There’s nothing for me in there any more.” “Not to stay, of course,” she gives a little embarrassed laugh “but… to see what’s in there now . It might be good for the children to know a little bit of where your people come from.” “No.” The vehemence with which he says it surprises even himself, and Alys looks up to him, almost startled. “It’s …better for them, that they don’t.” Even after all these years, he has to grapple with an occasional phrase, especially when he feels deeply about what he wants to say, and it never fails to annoy him. “They should grow up to be northmen. People here… will think less of them for their wildling blood. It’s not… not something that they can be proud of.” He’s long ago given up on explaining that the Thenns had little to do with other wildlings and no love lost for them. The northmen are determined to see the free folk as one indistinguishable mass of odd, unkempt, fur-covered savages.

The suspicion of peasants does not weigh on his mind, but knowing the other northern lords still look askance at him is a different matter. The pure, white-hot hatred of old Mors Umber is easy to understand, after all, he only need to think of his own father to know where it wells from, and it even serves to make the other Umbers mildly apologetic. But the Thenns fought alongside northmen when the Others came, and all it earned was some grudging respect for their prowess in the battlefield. Alys is the only reason their neighbours treat them with even the most common courtesy. She must work hard to maintain this edifice, and she does so, smiling and talking and negotiating and endlessly coaching him on what to say and how to act. She’s never once complained of all the responsibility she bears, though she must feel it sometimes, and he respects her more than he can say for that. Every time their children were born, he was struck with the most absolute, blinding terror that the childbirth would kill her and he’d be left alone to find his way in this new world.

It isn’t always better when the northmen do forget who he is. “Those damned wildlings, since they came every common girl seems to have a brat who’s half savage.  Anyone who tries to steal a woman should have his member chopped off” fumed that that spotty-faced runt of Manderly’s. “The northern women seem to want to be stolen” he growled in response, letting through the accent that he usually works hard to suppress, and had the pleasure of seeing the lad flash bright red. “Mind your manners! What’s gotten into you, did some girl laugh when you dropped your breeches?” Lord Manderly boxed the boy’s ear, quickly turning the insult into jest at the lad’s expense, but he knew that what the boy was stupid enough to shout, grown men muttered under their breath.

What’s even more difficult to put into words is that he fears seeing the valley of the Thenn would make them think less of themselves. The longhalls must have long ago caved in and willow saplings sprouted over the pastures, but even if they could see everything as it once was, the distant valley would seem poor and dismal compared to this immense fortress they inhabit.

\--

He may be a king, but for him he’s always Lord Snow, and he knows it. Jon steps forward, his hand outstretched. “I know better than to wait for you to kneel, Lord Thenn.” The king smiles, and he musters up a smile of his own, finding it less difficult than he expected. Meeting him again is unsettling, it brings up many different recollections that threaten to push aside the old grudge that he has carefully dug up and centered in his memory.

Val hardly shows her age, though more than ten years have passed since she came through the Wall. The years have only slightly tightened the skin over those finely formed bones, hollowed the cheeks and drooped the lids a little, but her figure is as he remembers it. Winterfell has sheltered her from the harsh winds that would have turned her a crony before thirty, and childbirth hasn’t left its marks on her body. The King in the North has no issue; Sigorn doesn’t know whether he decided to leave at least one part of his oath unbroken, or whether the gods kept it for him.

He catches Alys looking at Val too, trying to hide her displeasure. Alys has borne four children, and she isn’t any more the skinny and angular girl who once rode to the Wall. Her mile is still the same, though, and he catches a glimpse of it when he touches her arm while beckoning the children to come present themselves. Faced  with young Styr, Jon almost laughs, and it’s not hard to see the joke. “You do look rather like your grandfather. He’s the very image of Lord Rickard,” he nods to Alys and turns back to the boy. “I must be the only man in Westeros who met both of your grandfathers. They were brave men, fierce and loyal to what they believed in. I hope you will bring honor to their names.“ He looks at the boy, but Sigorn knows he addresses them and Styr senses it, too, darting a quick look at his parents whose expressions have stiffened.

He knows suddenly, and with perfect and saddening clarity, that this is as close to an apology he will ever have from Lord Snow. If he doesn’t accept what is now offered, there will never be the vengeance due to his father either, only a void where he can keep his grudge forever. _Forgive me father. For Styr’s sake, not mine or yours._  “I hope too,” he says, laying a hand on his son’s shoulder but looking directly at the king, letting him see the resignation in his eyes.  Jon nods briefly and the moment passes, never to be repeated.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The burial under a pile of rocks (with the deceased's worldly possessions) was an actual Bronze Age burial custom in Scandinavia. I wanted to factor it into the story because there are several such graves near my house and they're quite fascinating :)


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